James Harrison, Director, Institute of Employment Rights (IER)
This weekend, trade union delegates from all over the country will descend on Brighton for the annual Trades Union Congress. Whilst on the conference floor, there will be speeches made, motions passed and lively debate throughout the 4 days, it is not only in Congress hall, but in Number 10 where the debate from trade union members needs to be heard.
Congress brings together around 3,000 people from across the movement to set out the policy agenda for the coming year, and the Institute of Employment Rights (IER) plays a central role in encouraging and informing the debate every year, via our Sunday evening fringe meeting, with dedicated reports and briefings – and a central presence in the conference centre as exhibitors.
In recent years, our focus has been on the employment rights legislation that, as an organisation, the IER has had a crucial role in shaping, and that culminated in the Employment Rights Act 2025. Whilst that Act has been welcome and will have many benefits, too much of the original, comprehensive, package contained in the ‘New Deal for Working People’ has been watered down or kicked into the long grass.
When Andy Burnham took over from Keir Starmer as Prime Minister, he talked of wanting to “end 40 years of neoliberalism”. If he’s serious about even beginning that huge task, our new PM must grasp the nettle on workers’ rights. So far, he hasn’t addressed the fact that the Employment Rights Act leaves gaps that allow bad employers to carry on exploiting workers and denies the trade union movement the tools and freedom to organise in response. This Act will do very little to arrest and reverse the continued political managed decline of trade union membership since 1980.
As the IER / Campaign for Trade Union Freedom’s new, 4-page briefing produced especially for TUC Congress explains, there are simple ways in which Burnham could address these gaps and put workers at the centre of a renewal of our economy and society:
- Strengthening the legislation covering zero-hours contracts, fire and rehire, the right to strike and trade union access to workplaces. These are not technical details. They determine whether workers are able to exercise their rights effectively in practice.
- Ensure that no workers are excluded from basic employment rights by reinstating the vital Status of Workers element of the legislation which promised to abolish the different categories of workers, including bogus self-employment, to address the exploitation of casualised workers, particularly those working in the gig economy. The Status of Workers proposals have, to an extent, been kicked into the long grass, and there is real concern that the business lobby will succeed in excluding them from the final package of rights – meaning that we are left with an exploitative, neoliberal model for those at the sharp end of employment.
- Reinstate sectoral collective bargaining as envisaged in the original proposals, rather than the watered-down pilot programme for social care alone. Before Thatcher’s attack on collective bargaining in the 1980s, around 80% of the UK workforce was covered by a collective agreement. Today, it is down to 25%. The New Deal gave the Secretary of State the powers to identity sectors that would benefit from the immediate introduction of sectoral collective bargaining to tackle the cost-of-living crisis at source. The new negotiating bodies (NB’s) the Act provides are more like pay review bodies, with overbearing ministerial power skewing/subverting the negotiation process. The failure to enable sectoral bargaining and the limits on the NBs do not fulfil the UK’s ratified international obligations to ‘encourage and promote’ collective bargaining, leaving the UK in breach of those laws.
- Deal with the under-resourced and creaking tribunal system, so that workers have genuine access to justice, and not just rights on paper. With many tribunals listing hearing dates of 2030 Burnham should remember that in the experience of the average worker justice deferred is justice denied.
- Urgently establish a Ministry of Labour, as envisaged in the New Deal for Working People. Headed by a Secretary of State, this would mean that someone in his Cabinet was responsible for Employment Rights and would fight for that agenda, rather than being an afterthought within a Business Department, funded and mandated to deliver for business (not workers).
To the trade-unionists in the debate hall it is important to remember that none of these changes are impossible. Over the past few years, exploitative bosses have spent an enormous amount of money, time, and energy lobbying Ministers to water down all these aspects, in order to maintain the status quo. It is important for the trade union movement to apply pressure, to ensure their demands are listened to, and the promises of the New Deal for Working People are delivered in full.
If the Government continues to accede to the demands of the business lobby, we will be left with hollow employment rights legislation that, while securing many individual rights on paper, does little to shift collective power in favour of workers, enforce those rights meaningfully, and reverse the continued political managed decline of trade unions.
Burnham would do well to remember that the business lobby should largely be ignored/countered too, except on exceptional grounds – their lobbying over the decades has got workers into the mess we are in today. They created the current problems for their own gain, and they are trying to hollow out the much-needed solution before it takes hold. Ignoring the white noise from employers’ associations and the calls for more de-regulation from the bond markets will be a litmus test for Burnham. But if these bold steps are executed, it would go some way to show workers that their concerns, their working lives, and their happiness are a priority for the Government.
Burnham could choose to take another path and as Tony Burke, Prof Keith Ewing and Lord John Hendy say in our joint TUC briefing, there are actions the Government can take immediately, with no ‘cost,’ but the only real way to secure the transformational policies that were promised in the ‘New Deal for Working People’ is through a Second Employment Rights Bill, plugging the gaps that have appeared since the publication of the original proposals. We also need to pave the way for entirely new rights, like negotiating better outcomes for workers labouring under AI and algorithmic management systems. This would no doubt chime well with the general public and the 34 million workers in the UK, but it could also help rejuvenate participation, enthusiasm, and increase perceived relevance in the wider labour movement for a new generation of workers.
If you are interested to read more, IER experts have authored several fact sheets about what new rights are in the Act, where the deficiencies are, and what needs to come next. We have also produced a Working Life Podcast that continues to look at the Act, and other topical workplace issues.
At our annual in-person IER / CTUF Congress Fringe on Sunday, we will be explaining the necessity for a Second Bill and a commitment to transforming the power relations between workers and employers. Amongst those speaking will be Steve Gillan of the POA, Fran Heathcote of PCS, USDAW’s Joanne Thomas, Andrea Egan of Unison, Neil Todd from Thompson’s Solicitors, Sarah Woolley of BFAWU (chairing) and our own Professor Keith Ewing and Lord John Hendy KC. As always with the IER’s and CTUF’s events, it’s sure to be a lively and interesting meeting and a wonderful way to start TUC Congress. Find us on Sunday in the Brighton Centre, meeting room 1a at 6.45 (or the end of Congress).
- James Harrison is the Director of the Institute of Employment Rights (IER).
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